A Different Kind Of Sewing Project

Wallaby joey pouches

For years, I've thought that out of the slew of issues I care about, climate change was at the top of my list.  However, like so many other people, I also hoped we had more time before we would start seeing the impact.  But the increase in severe weather-related events all over the world combined with a torrent of discouraging news from climate scientists have made me feel very pessimistic.  In recent horrible events, it appears that climate change has at the least contributed to the severity of Australia's bush fires with high temperatures and prolonged droughts.

There has been a good deal of media coverage of the suffering caused by these fires, including the toll on Australia's wild animals.  So when I received an email from Mood Fabrics describing a project to make pouches for rescued kangaroo and wallaby joeys, I decided to contribute.  You can read about it here; I decided to use Piccolo Studio's free tutorial and downloadable pattern.  As anyone who sews can attest, it is not uncommon to have a healthy stash of perfectly nice fabric that is languishing for any number of reasons, often because the pieces are too small to make a garment out of but too large to throw away.  In the spirit of sustainability (and decluttering my home) I used some of these fabrics, and feel that they were put to very good use.

To keep things relatively simple and to squeeze out more pouches from my selection of fabrics, I opted to make the smaller wallaby joey pouches instead of the kangaroo ones.  All five pouches I made are lined in flannel.  The blue one in the picture that doesn't have a scooped front is intended to be a night pouch that will be harder for the joey to peek out of while he/she is sleeping.

I'll send these off today to the person who is collecting them to send to Australia.  I hope they'll be useful.  And I fervently hope that we can all collectively take action to rein in these changes in our climate that are contributing to so much misery.

Grad School As A "Nontraditional" Student: Fourth Semester Review

My fourth semester of Grad School 2.0 is finished!  This makes me 80% of the way done, which truly feels exhilarating, especially when I remember how demoralized I felt after fall semester last year, which was possibly the busiest time of my adult life.

This semester has its share of ups and downs.  Academically, things were easier this semester than fall or spring semester of last year.  I think that's mostly because I had fewer total classes.  Internship was a mixed bag.  I was at two sites that were a very long commute from home.  One site had a population I was more interested in, but a weird, passive aggressive supervisor.  The other one had a great supervisor but a population I knew wouldn't be my first choice to work with professionally.  But, it's done, and I have an internship I'm very excited about for next semester (adult outpatient). 

Oh, and that class I had to retake from last semester?  I got an A this semester!  I requested permission to take it at another institution.  This turned out to be a very good move. Not only did I get a better grade, but I learned more and had a more pleasant experience than I had had in any of these subject's classes at my home institution.  The only downside was having to pay tuition to an additional university, but at this point, I feel it was money very well spent.

I don't have too many lessons to share from this semester, but here's what I can think of:
1.  Don't be afraid to advocate to do something unusual.  I'm thinking specifically of requesting to take a class at another university here.  Sometimes you have to use your hard-earned life experience and realize when something just isn't working out.  The worst that can happen is that someone can say no, but even then, making a request sometimes alerts someone to a problem.
2.  Even if you're an independent adult, you may need someone's help to clear an obstacle.  This lesson is a tough one for me, largely because I think it's risky to rely on other people to help you.  But grad school is full of trying (and sometimes unfair) experiences just like anything else.  And personally, I feel like I have had way fewer cards to play as a student than I have at most jobs.  This semester, I had two notable instances of receiving help to clear obstacles.  One came from a professor helping advance my case to take a course at another university after I initially encountered resistance.  Another came from another person helping to make sure that my less-than-stellar internship supervisor from this semester didn't completely gum up the works for me (there is way more to that story than I want to rehash here).  I think all the usual common sense applies here about choosing your battles and not creating needless drama with people.  But I also think that most programs want people to graduate in a timely fashion, so if you look like you're on a good trajectory to do that, people will often help pave the way for you.
3.  Academic programs are (generally) finite.  I say "generally" because some doctoral programs seem to magically expand every time a student appears to approach the end.  But most other degree and certificate programs are intended to be for a fixed period of time.  And time always passes, so if you can just keep yourself going, you'll get there.  Generally speaking, partially completed degrees or certificates won't do much for you professionally, so I think it's usually worth trying to finish unless you've had a complete change of heart about what you want to do, the amount of money you'll spend trying to finish isn't worth the eventual reward, or you have extenuating life circumstances that make it impossible to finish.

Wish me luck!  If all goes well, I'll be writing my last ever of this series of posts in May.

NC Coast Pictures

Ugh, I think this has been my longest stint of not blogging yet.  Something about end-of-semester drama and a respiratory illness that has been hanging on for weeks made me feel less than inspired to write.  But I think that some pictures from my after Christmas trip to the NC coast with my family is a good way to ease back in.

I should say first that I find seagulls very entertaining, and love to take pictures of them.  So when my dad decided to pack up an uneaten biscuit from breakfast to feed them, I was very excited.  (On a side note, the restaurant where we ate is excellent except for the biscuits.  But you know how some restaurants have this sort of bread-y item that looks like a biscuit, but the texture is all wrong?  That was what we wanted to feed to the seagulls!).  I couldn't see what was was going on in the viewfinder very well because of the glare from the sun, so I had to point, click, and hope for the best.  These are my favorites from the seagull shots.  The last one was taken around the time I thought I'd better run for cover.

Also, a few other shots:

Clouds over the water

A night heron!  Due to their tendency to appear at night, this is the best picture I've ever gotten of one.

I saw a few washed up jellyfish this year.  It seems to vary a lot.

Impressive barnacles on driftwood.

Driftwood festooned with shells.

I think this was supposed to be a heart in my latte foam, but the overall effect seems quite different...

Life's Little Triumphs: I Found A Decaf Cold Brew!

Hmmm...I could also say that one of life's little triumphs is that I'm carving out some time to blog.  But that's another story for another day.  Moving on to the decaf story...

My desire to drink decaf came as an unwelcome surprise a number of years ago when I had multiple terrifying episodes of fast heart rate out of nowhere.  I never actually thought these episodes were caused by caffeine--after all, I had been drinking caffeine for years with no problem--but it did seem wise to get rid of any substances that might in any way contribute to the problem.  I gave up caffeine (including decaf coffee, which of course is not totally free of caffeine) cold turkey at that time.

I forget how long that lasted, but I do remember what led me to start drinking small amounts of caffeine again.  Having exhausted my sick leave (and some of my annual leave) trying to figure out what was causing the heart issue (inconclusive in the end, but likely related to my thyroid), I caught two colds back to back.  To the utter annoyance of my colleagues, I decided to work through these colds since I had no sick leave to speak of and desperately wanted to have enough leave to take a vacation at some point.  But working while sick is exhausting and something had to give.  I started drinking caffeinated tea and decaf coffee at that point.  This has mostly stuck through the years.  I've had fully caffeinated coffee a few times since then, but I actually like taking in a lower amount of caffeine.  I find that my energy levels are more even throughout the day, and I spend less time desperate to find a bathroom.

So this is all fine and good, but when you go out for coffee, the decaf situation is pretty disappointing for the most part.  There is usually only one variety available, and sometimes you're stuck paying for a specialty drink because they're out of brewed decaf.  And nobody every seemed to be able to offer iced decaf.  You could get an iced decaf latte or other specialty drink, but you had to pay more for it.  And wait for them to make it.  I was never sure which part bothered me more.

But!  A new coffee shop moved into a recently constructed apartment building near me.  And it has the holy grail of decaf cold brew!  I could hardly believe my eyes when I first saw it on the menu.  It's become my go-to order (although as it gets colder outside, that might change for a few months). And the coffee shop in question has become my go-to coffee shop because it offers something that the other coffee shops near me don't.  If anyone else has been looking for decaf cold brew, the coffee shop is PJ's.  Looking at their website, it looks like most of their locations are in Louisiana and Mississippi, but it also looks like they're working to expand to other parts of the country (like where I live, for example).  They also have good brownies, so if you do happen upon one of their locations, be sure to stop in for your cold brew and chocolate fix!

2019 Balcony Garden

Summer is technically over--though it doesn't always feel like it--and I haven't written yet about this year's balcony garden!  If this year had a theme, I would say it's the triumph of insects in finding what they need.

This year, I started out with mint (which came back again), basil, cherry tomatoes, larger tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini.  The ever-hardy mint, basil, and cherry tomatoes did great.  I thought the cucumbers were going to do well--the plant grew quickly, and I had a bumper crop of them a couple years ago--but aphids quickly killed the plant.  I'm not sure how aphids found a cucumber plant on a random balcony, but they did.

The zucchinis were a disappointment, too.  I didn't get a single zucchini out of the plant this summer!  I think part of the problem was that the male and female blossoms on the plant seemed out of sync, reducing the chance that the female blossoms would be pollinated.  Maybe if you want zucchinis you just need to have more than one plant?

I bought the larger tomato plant (I no longer remember the name of the variety) because it was described as being "prolific."  The plant itself has looked healthy this entire time, but I got a grand total of one tomato from it.  Oh, and there's a green tomato on the plant now, which may or may not be edible before the first frost.

But more about the insects' triumph.  My cherry tomato plant is actually still producing on a very small scale, but most of the tomatoes came in July.  A few weeks ago, I found a scary-looking caterpillar on the cherry tomato plant.  I looked this up (I think my Google search was "fat green caterpillar on tomato plant") and learned it was a tomato hornworm.  The article I read said that in spite of its alarming experience, it didn't bite or sting, so you could just remove it from your plants.  I decided I didn't feel like dealing with it, and the plant was on the way out anyway, so I decided to cede the plant to the caterpillar.

Another thing the article mentioned was that wasps sometimes laid their eggs on tomato hornworms.  So I wasn't too surprised when a few days later, I found this:

I actually feel sort of sorry for the caterpillar (what a way to go!) but I'm amazed at the variety of insects that have managed to find my balcony garden and get what they need from it.  I do hope that once the wasps hatch that they find what they need somewhere else, however.

End Of A Commuting Era

As a longtime mass transit commuter, I am very sorry to report that Thursday was the last day for the Washington Post's free paper, Express.

For those who do not live in this area, Express was a paper that was distributed on weekdays at Metro stations and some other locations in the DC area.  It was a mix of news stories reported in Washington Post and entertainment news of different sorts (wacky stories that you might have missed, celebrities, local personalities).  At the Metro stations, you could usually find people handing out the Express papers during the morning rush hour.  We all know that the morning commute to work is not always a lot of fun, but the Express paper was something I could look forward to.

Its demise was very sudden.  I believe employees (both writers and hawkers) were told on Tuesday; I learned from another news source on Wednesday that Thursday would be its last day.  I've read that the hawkers were given no severance (I believe they were contracted through another company).  I'm not sure about the details with the writers, but I've read that they were not under the union agreement that regular Washington Post writers had. I've also read at least a couple of stories about writers who moved to the area recently specifically for that job, who are suddenly scrambling in an expensive area to find something else.  (Not to employers:  If you're wondering whether sudden layoffs are a kind, compassionate way to terminate employees, they're not).

Anyway, I feel very sorry for the people whose jobs ended this way.  And I feel sad that all of us DC-area commuters are missing out on a very nice free paper.  One of my many worries these days is that there are too many competing narratives on major news stories, and that these competing narratives are deepening divisions in our society.  I'm fully aware of the problems of going too far in the other direction, of course (state-run media in totalitarian states, anyone?), but I was always grateful for a source of news that anyone could access, even without a TV, computer, or phone.  We can use all the common ground we can get these days.

Grad School As A "Nontraditional" Student: Third Semester Review

I'm happy to report that my third semester of grad school is finished!  That makes me 60% of the way done!  Yay!  I'm a lot less excited to report that my fourth semester starts today (with an evening class...grrr), but on the other hand, I have to start it in order to finish it.

Unlike first and second semesters, third semester was relatively chill.  This is largely because it was broken into blocks, with two blocks of classes and one block of internship.  This meant that I wasn't having to juggle classes with clinic responsibilities.  Also, to be completely honest, my internship supervisor was way more pleasant and reasonable than some of the clinical supervisors I had during my first two semesters.  That probably doesn't seem like a nice thing to say, but it's true, and it had a huge impact on my experience.

The one complaint I have about third semester is that I got a B- in a class and will have to retake it this fall (on top of my other classes and my fall internship).  More on that in a moment, but this allows me to segue into the main point of what I want to write about today, which is how I chose my graduate program, and how I would view the process differently if I were to do it over again.  I also want to note here that "if I were to do it over again" is strictly hypothetical.  I am completely fed up with school, and if my current endeavor fails (either in terms of getting a degree or launching a new career), my next plan resembles the one in the Portlandia skit She's Making Jewelry Now.

I'm going to be deliberately vague about some details here, but when I applied to graduate programs, I applied to three, which I will refer to as University A, University B, and University C.  I told myself when I applied that I would let cost be the deciding factor if I received more than one acceptance.  In the end, University A accepted me without any funding, but with the idea that departmental funding might open up or that I could look for my own source of funding within the university.  University B accepted me and verbally offered me a funding package, but with no written documentation before I needed to make a decision.  University C waitlisted me.  University C has significantly higher tuition than either University A or University B anyway, so I ruled it out.

On paper, I was a much better fit for University A than University B, and truthfully, I had always envisioned going to University A.  The interesting thing about University B was that it has an "extra" component to its program that would enable me to learn a skill I had thought would be interesting to learn, but that is a "nice to know" rather than a "need to know" in our field.  I was somewhat concerned that University B didn't give me written documentation of my funding package before the deadline to make a decision, but also reasoned that University A hadn't offered me anything.  Plus, my contact from University B was telling me that my funding package would pay the majority of my tuition throughout my program and I wouldn't have to apply for funding every semester.  Despite my reservations, I reminded myself that cost was going to be my deciding factor and chose to go to University B.

Well.  Obviously, I can't speak for what my experience might have been at University A, but I can say that attending University B has been a lesson in things going wrong.  The grant that was supposed to fund me throughout my program had to be returned to its sponsor due to university drama that I won't get into here.  And that "extra" component that I had actually viewed as a selling point for the program?  It's been nothing but a source of stress and struggle.  It was in that class that I received a B- over the summer, giving me an extra burden this fall.  All for something I don't need to know and am unlikely to use professionally.  All of this leads me to how I would think about grad programs if I were to do this again:

1.  Consider funding, but think of it in a more nuanced way.  There is a wonderful expression in Arabic that translates to "He married the monkey for its money.  The money went and the monkey remained a monkey."  I thought about this expression a lot in the months after the grant that was supposed to fund me was returned.  In the end, one thing I'm grateful for is that the university decided to provide a substantial portion of what I was initially offered under the grant.  However, it took many months for this to come fruition, giving me a lot of time to feel upset and worried about how much tuition money I might be on the hook for.  Since bad things sometimes happen with grants, if I were to do it over, I would consider how I would feel about the university if the grant fell through.  Would I still feel okay about my choice of the university, or would I feel like I should have gone elsewhere?  Also, I would consider secondary funding options.  University B is small and fairly under-resourced, and there were few additional options for funding.  University A is much larger and would have had more opportunities.

2.  Think carefully about anything "extra," even if it seems interesting.  Even if the "extra" component of my program came more easily to me, it's still another demand on my time.  My advice to anyone at this point is that if you have anything in your grad program beyond classes (clinical components, teaching, research responsibilities, etc.), you have no time for anything "extra" and "extra" things you have to do will just make you unhappy.  Stick with the basics of what you need to do and worry about learning extra skills later.

3.  Never trust anyone else to think realistically.  I had wondered what it would be like to take regular academic classes, the "extra" classes in my program, and have clinic responsibilities.  But I decided that it must be possible to get all this stuff done because surely there was some adult in charge thinking realistically, right?  Nope.  If your program responsibilities sound like too much, they probably are, and the "adult" in charge probably thinks you're going to give up eating or sleeping to get stuff done.  In my case, I've had to cut corners, mostly meaning that I do very little of the assigned reading for any class.  Obviously, this is far from ideal from a learning perspective.

In the end, I'm hoping that once I graduate, all of this stuff will be water under the bridge.  But it is painful to think that decisions I made in selecting a program may have made the journey more difficult.